Breakthrough research at the University of Melbourne may have cracked the code to developing a single flu vaccine that will provide lifelong protection.
The research team says "killer" CD8+T cells are tasked by the body with taking out new viruses and are able to memorise distinct strains.
The discovery, published in the Nature Communications journal, was made with researchers from China's Fudan University during the avian flu breakout of 2013.
University of Melbourne's associate professor Katherine Kedzierska says 99 per cent of people with the H7N9 virus were hospitalised, while 30 per cent died.
“The virus was infecting more people rapidly and nobody had immunity. Thankfully, we did manage to contain the virus but we knew we had come face-to-face with a potential pandemic that could kill millions of people around the world if the virus became able to spread between humans," she says.
Samples from patients infected with that flu showed those who could not make the T cells were dying.
The findings lead to the potential of moving from vaccines for specific influenza strains toward developing a protection, which is based on T-cells.
"Our extraordinary breakthrough could lead to the development of a vaccine component that can protect against all new influenza viruses, with the potential for future development of a one-off universal flu vaccine shot," she adds.
It could also help clinicians make early predictions about how well a patient's immune system will handle a virus.
